re:Virtual package: postscript-preview

["brian (b.c.) white" <bcwhite@bnr.ca>]

>> If two packages provide "postscript-preview", will it be considered a
>> conflict?  If so, then this might not be a good idea.  There may be
>> cases where people want two different postscript viewers on their machine.
>
>It was my understanding that the provides field was created specificaly 
>so that more than one package could provide a feature, thus releaving 
>depends from having to specify multiple package dependance when really 
>only one feature needed to be supplied.

This is my understanding, too, and it makes complete sense in the case
where there can logically only be one present at a time.  Sendmail/Smail
is a perfect example with the "mail-transport-agent" virtual package.

But when it comes to packages that provide the same functionality but
can peacefully coexist, what then?  The best example for this might be
a virtual package of the name "editor".  I use emacs, but if somebody
who shares my machine (or my /usr mount, for that matter) wants to use
vi, then both could not provide the virtual package "editor" if it
will cause a conflict.  The same goes for multiple postscript viewer
packages.

If virtual packages are going to be used for the purpose you suggest
(and I think they should be), then there must be a way to specify that
a virtual package is supplied non-exclusively so that other packages
can also supply the same virtual package without conflicting.

                                        Brian
                                 ( bcwhite@bnr.ca )

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